When They Were Boys

by Larry Kane

Aspinall was one of the boys of the road who got the Beatles where they needed to go—except for the time he got lost while driving the boys to London for their infamous Decca audition. But it would take more than bad weather to stop Neil Aspinall.

  I viewed him as the ultimate roadie, with a twist. Aspinall was first and foremost interested in the boys’ safety and protection—safety being the art of securing them through secret passageways and narrow corridors away from screaming hordes of teenagers; protection being the assurance that their trysts with women were conducted under layers of secrecy and security that resembled that afforded to heads of state.

  In both regards, safety and “social” security, Aspinall had no equal.

  He was cunning and cool. He did have some drawbacks: for one, he hated the press, and in the early days never understood their pivotal role in branding the Beatles to success. Eventually, after I traveled for weeks with him, he learned to trust me, but reluctantly. He was one of the group, including Brian Epstein and 1964 Beatles press chief Derek Taylor, that roused me in the middle of the night to help convince a mother that her two young daughters, who found their way to John’s room in Las Vegas, were treated to nothing more than some candy and company. The episode, as you will learn, was much ado about nothing.

  Even after my help there, he treated me and the print journalists with indifference, sometimes trying to deny us access, even when the boys insisted we come into a bedroom or dressing room.

  Despite his attitude, I had a deep respect for Aspinall. He was so devoted to the boys in their playing years, and after that, he was a devotee and keeper of the flame as he protected the Beatles’ empire as a shrewd business leader for four decades. He ran Apple, the Beatles’ company, as smoothly as he maneuvered their tricky travels in the beginning.

  He was also a proud and active father to his first child, Roag, whom he produced with Mona Best.

  “He was a devoted dad, always there for me,” Roag remembers. “He had a later family, but never was far from my interests. And he taught me a lot.”

  In truth, many of the traits that Aspinall passed on to Roag have made the youngest of the Best sons the most protective of his brother Pete, much in the same style as Aspinall.

  In the beginning, Aspinall was the king of transit. His mode was a van, a secondhand Bedford, hardly the stuff of luxury. And in that van Aspinall had his trusty assistant, Tony Bramwell, who had a front-row seat to some of the best songwriting in history.

  Tony Bramwell—Friend Forever

  The boy who used to play with Paul and George in and around the once-bombed air base in Liverpool, as we now know, is the same boy who had that later chance meeting on the bus with George en route to what would become the thrilling concert at Litherland.

  As a teenager, given a chance by Brian Epstein, he was a helper to Aspinall on many of those bumpy van trips. Like Aspinall, Tony Bramwell heard many of the songs before we did, worked out by John and Paul in the creaky seats of Aspinall’s Bedford.

  “We didn’t have a lot of room,” Bramwell remembers. “Neil would drive and John would often sit up front, smoke, and chat it up. In the back, the rest of us found little room around the equipment. Sometimes we would try to sleep on our coats, or lean against an amplifier. I’ll tell you . . . the most interesting times were when Paul went up front with John. They would sing some things, then one of them would doze off. A little later, they would continue, their notebooks scattered with lyrics, or proposed lyrics. We would pay some attention, but the words and tunes would come back months or years later, when I heard them on stage or on records. It’s always kind of amazing that we heard them in the beginning, and had no idea that years later, curious minds everywhere would be trying to figure out what the words meant.”

  Trying to figure out Tony Bramwell is not hard. He is a genuine character, whose own personality is as unique as the story he lived through.

  Bramwell skips along the ancient streets of his adopted town, Totnes, soaking in the sun and enjoying every moment as he points out the landmarks, the river, and the shops, and snakes through the alleyways to lead me to a pub with a beautiful river view. Bramwell has worked for so many rock groups over the years, witnessed so many substance breakdowns, and traveled so far and wide, that it’s amazing that he is as healthy as he is, at his age. The man has a reputation for hard drinking, and in the twilight of his youth, for “shagging,” the unique British word for the root of all civilization.

  “He shagged [her],” he would say, “and they shagged them, and I shagged them, too.” To say he’s just a “character” is a gross understatement—the man is also a writer and a star promoter who wrote one of the most underappreciated titles, Magical Mystery Tours: My Life with the Beatles, in the vast history of Beatles books.

  Totnes is in Devon, a county in southwest England that features some of the most breathtaking views in the United Kingdom. The air is clear and the town is ideal for walking, shopping on beautiful High Street, searching for the New Age life, and reveling in the vivid memories of a not-so-ancient past when talent, fate, and numerous acts of God created the immortals of Tony Bramwell’s life. Artists, painters, and musicians live among the 7,500 permanent residents of Totnes, named by Time magazine in 2007 as the “Capital of New Age Chic.” It has been subsequently labeled one of the top ten “Funky Towns” in the world, a perfect fit for Bramwell, who grew up in Liverpool not a quarter of a mile from a skinny, bike-riding kid named George Harrison.

  Bramwell, whose career in publicity and music promotion is legendary, appears weathered by the years of drinking and smoking and traveling, but his mind is as clear as the blue Totnes sky as he sips his Guinness slowly on a tavern terrace overlooking the scenic river Dart. Tony Bramwell is a modern Zelig. He rolls his own cigarette in brown paper and inhales deeply, washing the smoke away with the froth of the beer.

  Promoter, marketer, writer, and pop music bon vivant, Bramwell became the first independent record promoter in Britain in the sixties, and remains involved in the music industry today, especially in the movies. Bramwell has known George, Paul, and John ever since they grew up together in Liverpool. And after the Beatles split, he became an independent record promoter representing superstar artists including the likes of Bruce Springsteen, and coordinating and promoting the music for films including Harry Saltzmann’s James Bond movie Live and Let Die (with Paul McCartney’s eponymous theme song), Chariots of Fire, Dirty Dancing, and Ghost. Through it all, he has never strayed far from the interests and work of his childhood buddies. When Macca is entertaining these days, Bramwell is often backstage sharing a laugh and the support of a longtime friend, someone who remembers the way it was.

  Interviewing Bramwell is risky business. In our scenic afternoon in Totnes, in January 2011, he wears a black T-shirt with white letters that read, “Still Pissed at Yoko.” He despises Yoko Ono. Calling her “the Princess of Darkness,” and claiming her responsible for a much different John Lennon than the one he knew, Bramwell has not only burned bridges, but torched the countryside with his exorbitant candor. When I wrote the foreword to his incredible memoir of life with the Beatles, Magical Mystery Tours, I was confident that Yoko and her supporters might consider me a dead-on-arrival reporter thereafter. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned in memory land of the boys, it is that personal feuds are often abandoned when people are interested in telling their story. And Bramwell’s account of the beginning, as you will learn throughout this story, is believable.

  Paul McCartney, who searched the fields surrounding Liverpool Air Base for unexploded bombs with friends George Harrison and a raggedy young Tony Bramwell, attests to Bramwell’s photographically creative memory, saying, “If you want to know anything about the Beatles, ask Tony Bramwell. He remembers more than I do.” Bramwell’s memory also includes the chronicle of, as he puts, “the shagathon,” the wondrous sexual adventures that liberated him from the streets of Liverpool to the capitals of the world. His knowledge is so vast on that subj
ect that he arguably could have expanded his career beyond expert record promoter to an on-the-job author of studies on the male sexual endurance.

  Bramwell is a rare witness, five years younger than the boys, who was in towns, places, and situations that few have been. But he has a long-term memory that shines the spotlight on the real boys, not the cartoon-character “Fabs” who were characterized in the early years by some of the older journalists with an envy for and vengeance against anything to do with young people.

  “George and I lived about a quarter of a mile from each other. He was wiry. He was always wiry, and he had wonderful parents, especially his father, Harry, who let us ride free on his bus. Harry was a wonderful man. I was six, George was nine. We used to build dens, hide in haystacks, play Robin Hood. Paul lived a few miles away. The three of us did some boy things, like look for unexploded bombs at the air base. George was kind and considerate, and warm.”

  While Bramwell remembers the long summer days of boyhood fancy, his skin turns flush when he talks about the kindness of George, and the exuding confidence of a twelve-year-old Paul.

  “He was a charmer,” Bramwell says. “And very Paulie, if you know what I mean.”

  What does he mean?

  “Everyone just, you know, liked him. He was always confident. He’s always been the most Beatley Beatle, but when he was a kid, he was just that—he’s always been that.”

  As Bramwell puts two thumbs up in a “Paulie salute,” he continues, with much pride.

  “He was never embarrassed about anything he had to do. He was up for it, as he would say, ‘I’m Paul McCartney and I am what I am.’ He was then, and today, always very confident.”

  Bramwell, who believes that Paul’s mother delivered him from the womb, has always felt a comfortable intimacy around McCartney, but didn’t meet up with young John Lennon until John was twelve.

  “He was rough, kind of a Teddy Boy. There was always that special, beguiling smile. I met him a few times, and then, on a beautiful July day, I walked over to a church in Woolton, and saw John from a distance. He was playing with a band. It was a skiffle group called the Quarrymen. Did you ever hear of them?” he quizzes with a wry smile.

  That chance second meeting with George on the bus would change Bramwell’s life, and the lives of playmates Paulie and George, and in many respects, through six and a half years of motion, madness, and an extraordinary leap of faith and talent, the life and times of a city, a nation, and amazingly, the planet Earth.

  Back in Totnes, Bramwell skips again through the town, helping me to make the 5:30 train back to London. His sneakers are pounding the earth in joy; his legs seem to be on fire. Maybe the Guinness is taking hold. Both of us are out of breath when we see the train in the station. Daringly, he walks across the track and holds his hand up in a gesture to stop the train. I board the train at the same moment that the train starts moving. Bramwell is now on the platform, waving and waving like a little boy, and as the train moves through the seascapes of Devon, I think about the boy and his mates and the fickle fates of chance, hope, and destiny.

  Malcolm Evans—Gentle Giant

  The pages of history are strewn with asterisked names, brief references to people who were along for the ride. When the dead are not around to explain their influence, the living quite often have a diluted memory when they write the credits for their own successes. And individuals who may have helped craft a larger success story are often forgotten.

  Therein lay the bittersweet saga of the Beatles’ roadie and touring friend whom I admired the most—a man with a hell of a story.

  When memorial services were held for Malcolm Evans on January 7, 1976, none of the boys were present—surprising, considering the enormous contribution he made as a pal, an employee, and an affectionate protector of their bodies and their privacy, especially during their infancy. It was not the first time the boys, usually so sensitive to others, ignored the rites of passage. Stuart Sutcliffe, so instrumental to the crafting of their style, and even their name, their birthright, was not honored appropriately either when he died in Hamburg after his painful ordeal.

  Fittingly, it was the quietly “compassionate Beatle,” George Harrison, who sent Mal’s family, at the end, a check for over 5,000 British pounds. Also, in 1997, George was the only Beatle who attended the funeral of pressman and promoter extraordinaire Derek Taylor, whose contributions resonate through these pages.

  Mal Evans was hardly a Beatles fan in the beginning when he first watched them at the Cavern Club. In fact, he was “crazy” about Elvis, whom he met along with the boys in Los Angeles in the summer of 1965. At six-foot-six, described as a “gentle giant” by many, Mal was not easy to miss. He befriended George, and within weeks in early 1962 became a part-time bouncer at the Cavern. His role in the formative years, as a friend, protector, and musical muse to the boys, is probably one of the greatest untold stories of their lives.

  In fact, of all the people in the inner circle of the young artists, no one felt more intimate on an emotional level with the Beatles, with the exception of Brian Epstein and Neil Aspinall.

  Mal carried their bags, listened attentively to their high and low moments and moods, and in every moment, big or small, helped them cling to their hopes and heartaches. He occasionally shared the benefits of touring life with them, including access to women and drugs in the later years, but never allowed them to put themselves in a dangerous position. Malcolm Frederick Evans was a man clearly with only one agenda: friendship with the boys. And I can tell you that, for much of his life, they loved him back. After all, it was Mal who put his body between surging crowds and the boys.

  In Detroit in 1964, after the police had mistakenly left us, I ran alongside Mal and Neil and a few other reporters to create a makeshift wedge as the maniacal crowd, penetrating the defenseless parking garage, circled in on the Beatles. Mal pushed and shoved through the crowd with his massive arms, elbows protruding just at the right moments. It was a sweaty and scary confrontation. There is no question, in my mind, that Mal, if necessary, would have killed for them. He often boasted of coldcocking a desperate photographer in Paris. I wasn’t there. But the legend of the fight, at least among the boys, remained solid.

  Aspinall, too, offered total dedication, but his edges were harder. Quite often, early on in the boys’ touring career in Britain, Aspinall enjoyed pushing and shoving away legitimate reporters. He was extremely jealous of anyone getting close to the boys. He was rude to me on several occasions, but Mal and Epstein intervened and made things right. While Aspinall never understood the role of media, so critical in the rise of the Beatles, Mal, with no prior experience, seemed to get it. Even later, when Aspinall assumed control of the Apple empire of the original Beatles, he tended to manage with an exclusionary style. Despite that, his knowledge of security, dedication to the Beatles, and maturing business prowess made him invaluable.

  But Mal was the popular one, with the body of a lion and the heart of a pussycat. Eleven years before his ugly end, the tall and broad former technician for the postal service traveled to Nassau, the Bahamas, to be with the boys. It was February 1965, almost six months after the end of the first great summer tour of North America. It was there that I reunited with my traveling companion.

  “Larry, Larry. It’s you, you fucking bastard. I love ya, Larry.”

  He hugged me hard when I walked through the doors of the boys’ rented cottage on the Nassau beachfront, so hard that the differential between our height caused him to grab my neck and press me to him, causing a troubling nosebleed. The gentle giant had inadvertently injured me. He got some ice and some napkins, and I laughed so hard I couldn’t stop the bleeding.

  The Beatles were in Nassau to film the movie Help! Mal, as always, was with them, helping to guard the beach in front of them and the winding road behind them. George and John were relaxing in the unkempt living room, with the smell of marijuana smoke hard to miss. Paul arrived from the beach with a pair of swimming fins in
his hand, accompanied by Neil Aspinall. Ringo was out of sight. I laid out my tape recorder and did a few interviews. Mal seemed more interested in the content of the interviews. In fact, both he and Aspinall asked me to avoid reporting on what the guys were smoking. I agreed.

  Shortly after I turned my recorder off, Mal motioned me over. He asked me where I was staying. My hotel was a modest two-story house just off of the old docks on Bay Street, the main commercial street in Nassau. There were two beds in the room.

  “Could I come along tonight, mate?” he whispered to me.

  “Sure,” I said, “but why?”

  “Want to spend a night away,” he replied.

  I got it. Aspinall was in the house. The security was set. It was a pleasantly cool February night in the Bahamas. The shooting schedule for the movie was tight. He wanted a night on the town.

  We took a cab into the downtown of Nassau. He left his little overnight bag in the room. A few minutes later, we went to the waterfront.

  “Could I take notes of our conversation?”

  “Of course, man, but no recordings. Just stuff on paper.”

  I knew I had to work fast. He would be seriously drunk within two hours, but his insight into the boys would be valuable, someday, if not in the heady days of 1965. I was curious, because the story of Mal Evans was often elusive.

  We walked to a restaurant and bar on the bay front, and I asked a few questions over dinner and drinks.

  So, how did it all begin?

  “I’m working for the phone company. I often took walks at lunch. Dropped in to this Cavern nightclub, took a smoke, and watched this band. It was 1962, just three years ago.”

  What was it like?

  “Well, the place was smoky and these guys, Pete, Paul, John, and George, were doing a very good set of rock . . . a little bit like Elvis music. A lot of businessmen there, and some kids. The music was really good. Got my Elvis groove going. You know I was a member of the Elvis fan club, did ya? Loved their music. They were very high-pitched and there was harmony . . . walked away with an impression.”